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4 decades later, new trial of alleged 1980 Paris synagogue bomber offers victims opportunity for closure
PARIS (JTA) — The courtroom was crowded but the defendant’s seat was empty on Monday as a landmark trial in French Jewish history got underway, nearly 43 years after the synagogue bombing that Hassan Diab stands accused of orchestrating.
An arrest warrant in the 1980 bombing that killed four people and wounded 46 was first issued for Diab, a Lebanese academic who lives in Canada, in 2008. Only now is a trial getting underway — and he has chosen not to attend, prompting criticism from both prosecutors and French Jews who are hoping for a sense of resolution after decades of trauma.
“Hassan Diab’s decision not to appear before your court is a great disgrace to your jurisdiction,” the attorney general said during the first day of the trial, during a discussion of whether an arrest warrant should be issued, a move that would require the trial to be dismissed.
“Which human would not make the same decision?” replied Diab’s lawyer, William Bourdon, about his client’s choice not to travel to France to stand trial. “This decision is humanly respectable. It is in no way a sign of cowardice.”
The Reform synagogue on Rue Copernic that was bombed is nested in the heart of a wealthy residential area, in Paris’ 16th arrondissement. A visitor today would not be able to tell that the ceiling had once been shattered into a million little pieces, that the floor had been spotted with blood. If not for the commemorative plaque at the entrance, nothing there would show the synagogue was once the scene of a deadly terrorist attack.
Yet the trial is freighted with the fear and anxiety that set in after what is now known as the Rue Copernic bombing on Oct. 3, 1980, understood to be the first fatal antisemitic attack in France since the Holocaust. Since then, a string of antisemitic attacks on communal targets and individuals have caused many French Jews to feel afraid, both about their personal vulnerability and about the state’s commitment to their safety.
But while the prosecution of some potentially antisemitic attacks has not always satisfied French Jews, the long ordeal to bring Diab to trial suggests great diligence on the part of many involved.
Bernard Cahen, an attorney for the synagogue and one of the victims, who is now in his 80s, promised he would see this case through until the end.
“Whatever the outcome, this has been going on for way too long,” he told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency in an interview, adding with a joke, “Everybody is surprised I’m still here to represent my clients.”
Cahen represents Monique Barbé, who lost her husband in the bombing when she was 37. Now nearly 80 and living in the South of France, Barbé won’t be coming to the trial.
“I don’t have the strength. But I can’t wait for all of this to end,” she told JTA.
About 300 worshippers were attending the Shabbat service and celebrating five bar mitzvahs that Friday evening when, at 6:35 p.m., a bomb exploded right outside the synagogue. The door was blown up, the glass ceiling collapsed on the worshippers; wooden benches were projected across the room.
Outside the synagogue the scene was even more gruesome. In his book about the case, the French journalist Jean Chichizola described “cars thrown on the road like children’s toys,” “flames licking the upper floors of adjacent buildings” and “shop windows blown up all along the street.”
In what looked like a war zone lay four bodies. Israeli TV journalist Aliza Shagrir, 44, was hit by the blast as she walked by. Philippe Boissou, 22, who was riding by on his motorcycle, also died on the spot. Driver Jean-Michel Barbé was found dead in his car, which was parked right outside the synagogue where he was awaiting clients attending the service. Nearby, a hotel worker named Hilario Lopes-Fernandez was seriously injured and died two days later.
Investigators quickly established that the bomb had been placed in the saddlebag of a Suzuki motorcycle parked in front of the synagogue. It was meant to go off precisely as the worshippers left the building, which would undoubtedly have killed many more people. But the ceremony had started a few minutes late.
At first, a man close to a neo-Nazi group claimed responsibility for the attack, misleading investigators for months before confessing he had nothing to do with it. The attack was ultimately attributed to an extremist group in the Middle East, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-Special Operations, and investigators alleged that Diab had planted the bomb. After an arrest warrant was issued in 2008, he was extradited from Canada in 2014, indicted in Paris and imprisoned.
But in a surprise to many, Diab’s case was dismissed in 2018, allowing him to return to Canada a free man. Prosecutors appealed, leading to another surprising turn of events in 2021 as the court upheld the earlier decision, directing Diab to stand trial after all.
“This is a gaping wound for the Jewish community and here in France people remember this horrible attack,” historian Marc Knobel told JTA. “Let us not forget how shocked and hurt we all were at the time.”
Indeed, outrage in the immediate aftermath of the bombing was fierce. France’s major trade unions called for a nationwide strike as a gesture of solidarity with Jews, while government ministers promised a speedy response and deployed police officers to other Jewish sites. Meanwhile, Jews marched in the streets, some vowing to take security into their own hands, in a demonstration that presaged longstanding tensions within French Jewry.
Over four decades later, Monique Barbé reflected on the tragedy that has changed her life forever.
“This has ruined my life. I was nervously wrecked for a very long time,” she said. “Imagine, I had to go identify my husband’s body. At the police station, they gave me back his half-burnt ID card and his damaged wedding ring. That’s all I was left with.”
But she questioned exactly how much the bombing and trial should register for people whose connection is more distant than her own.
“I do believe this is a necessary trial but except for those who lost their loved ones, I don’t see why anybody would still think about it today, it’s been so long,” Barbé said. “Plus there have been so many terrorist attacks since.”
Jean-François Bensahel, president of the Copernic synagogue, thinks this trial is actually of great importance even to those who were not born at the time of the attack.
“It’s engraved in our community’s history,” he said in an interview. “It’s difficult for us to understand why Hassan Diab has decided not to come to the trial but nothing is over yet. I want to trust justice will be served.”
The attack’s most lasting effects may not be in the trial but in the heavy security infrastructure that is now familiar to anyone engaging with French Jewish institutions, Bensahel said.
“Sadly, synagogues in France (and many other places) are all under protection, even though it’s completely counterintuitive to have security measures in a place of worship where you usually aspire to peace,” he said. “It shows something is not right with the world.”
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Remains of final hostage Ran Gvili on way back to Israel after being located in Gaza
(JTA) — The remains of the final Israeli hostage in Gaza, Ran Gvili, have been retrieved and are on their way back to Israel for burial.
The announcement by the Israeli military marks a significant milestone for the Israeli public, which transformed into a communal vigil for the hostages taken when Hamas attacked on Oct. 7, 2023. It also removes an obstacle to the second phase of the U.S.-brokered ceasefire between Israel and Hamas.
Gvili, a 24-year-old police officer, was killed defending Kibbutz Alumim on Oct. 7. His remains were recovered from a cemetery in Gaza City during a major military operation, the IDF said. Hundreds of bodies were reportedly exhumed during the search and are being reburied.
“The return of Ran z”l for burial is a painful moment of closing the circle—with the return of the last hostage from the Gaza Strip territory to the soil of Israel,” said Israeli Minister of Defense Israel Katz in a post on X. “This is a moment that underscores the State of Israel’s commitment to its fighters and citizens: to bring every single one home—as we promised the families and the public in Israel. This is mutual responsibility.”
Four of the hostages released under the ceasefire deal had been held since before Oct. 7, meaning that Gvili’s return marks the first time since 2014 that there will be no Israeli hostages in Gaza.
Earlier this month, the Trump administration announced that the second phase of the Gaza ceasefire had commenced despite opposition from Gvili’s family who said his body should be returned first.
Since then, the Trump administration has announced the formation of an international “Board of Peace” to oversee the ceasefire and presented plans for the reconstruction of Gaza. On Monday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office announced that it would reopen the border between the Gaza Strip and Egypt after the search for Gvili’s remains was completed.
Gvili’s mother, Talik, said the news of his return is “a relief, after these two and a half years, even though we hoped for a different ending,” according to the Times of Israel.
The discovery of Gvili’s remains was also celebrated by Israeli soldiers at the cemetery where he was found. Video of the soldiers posted on X showed many embracing and singing “Ani Ma’amin,” a Hebrew song meaning “I Believe.”
Some Jews and Jewish institutions removed their hostage necklaces and dismantled their displays in support of the hostages after all of the remaining living hostages were released in October. Others posted social media videos of themselves doing so on Monday following the news of Gvili’s return.
Speaking to the media in the Knesset on Monday, Netanyahu said, “We promised, and I promised, to bring everyone back, and we brought everyone back,” adding, “Rani is a hero of Israel. He went in first, he came out last. He came back.”
The post Remains of final hostage Ran Gvili on way back to Israel after being located in Gaza appeared first on The Forward.
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Columbia selects Jennifer Mnookin, Jewish U of Wisconsin chancellor, as its next leader
(JTA) — Three different women have taken turns as Columbia University’s president amid ongoing turmoil surrounding the handling of pro-Palestinian protests on the New York City campus. Now, Columbia has invited a fourth — and the first to be Jewish — to try her hand at running the Ivy League school.
Jennifer Mnookin, the chancellor of University of Wisconsin, has been chosen as Columbia’s next president, the co-chairs of the school’s board of trustees announced on Sunday. She will be the school’s first Jewish leader since Oct. 7, 2023, when Hamas attacked Israel, triggering a war in Gaza and a student protest movement in the United States of which Columbia was an epicenter.
Mnookin, a legal scholar, served as dean of the University of California, Los Angeles School of Law before moving to Wisconsin in 2022. At least two other candidates reportedly declined the Columbia position prior to her selection.
She takes the helm at a delicate time for Columbia as it continues to reel from the fallout of the student protests, which has included included penalties from the Trump administration, rapid leadership changes and ongoing fear and anxiety among many Jewish students.
“I am honored and thrilled to join Columbia University at this important moment,” Mnookin said in a statement released by the university. “Columbia is defined by rigorous scholarship, a deep commitment to open inquiry, world-class patient care, and an inseparable and enduring connection to New York City, the greatest city in the world.”
She follows three other women who struggled amid the turmoil. The president in charge on Oct. 7, Nemat Minouche Shafik, cited the “period of turmoil” that followed when she resigned in 2024; she had faced criticism from members of Congress as well as the Columbia community over her handling of the student encampment that formed this year.
Her temporary replacement, Katrina Armstrong, stepped down in March 2025 as the school faced pressure from the Trump administration over antisemitism allegations. Armstong’s successor, the current interim president, Claire Shipman, struck a $221 million deal with Trump to settle the claims; she also apologized soon after taking office for having suggested the removal of a Jewish member of the school’s board of trustees.
Now, Mnookin will be responsible for managing Columbia’s relationship with federal authorities, weighing and implementing the recommendations of its antisemitism task force and healing a divided campus, which has been closed to outsiders now for years.
“The last few years have been undeniably difficult for the Jewish and Israeli communities on campus. While challenges remain, there is a vibrant, joyful, proud Jewish community at Columbia,” Brian Cohen, executive director of Columbia/Barnard Hillel, said in a statement. “I am hopeful that President-elect Mnookin will bring the reputation, experience, and understanding that we need to build on that strong foundation.”
It will be Mnookin’s first time working at a private university. At Wisconsin, first sent law enforcement to shut down a student encampment, then negotiated with protesters after they established a second one. The deal required Students for Justice in Palestine to comply with university rules related to protest in exchange for the right to present their divestment demands to “decision makers,” who did not accede to them.
She also denounced neo-Nazi protesters who marched on the Wisconsin campus in November 2023, calling them “utterly repugnant.” Through it all, she gained a reputation for promoting open inquiry and academic freedom — even as Wisconsin, like dozens of other universities, faced a federal investigation over antisemitism allegations.
“I think universities should be spaces where ideas, and different ideas, embodied by people from different backgrounds, come together, and where it won’t always be comfortable, but where we will learn and do better from that engagement,” she said in a roundtable of college presidents published in The New York Times in November. (The other presidents were also Jewish: Sian Bellock of Dartmouth College and Michael Roth of Wesleyan University, who has emerged as a rare leader in higher education who is willing to spar with the Trump administration.)
Mnookin was raised in a Reform Jewish family in the Bay Area that escalated its Jewish engagement when she asked to celebrate her bat mitzvah, according to her father Robert. A scholar of conflict negotiation, he described the evolution in his 2015 book “The Jewish American Paradox: Embracing Choice in a Changing World,” which he said he wrote in part to explore his own late-onset attachment to Judaism.
The post Columbia selects Jennifer Mnookin, Jewish U of Wisconsin chancellor, as its next leader appeared first on The Forward.
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Tim Walz invokes Anne Frank in pressing Trump to end ICE operations in Minnesota
(JTA) — Tim Walz, the governor of Minnesota, invoked Anne Frank in exhorting President Donald Trump to call off the ICE operations in the Twin Cities in which a second protester was killed over the weekend.
Speaking at a press conference on Sunday, Walz — whose master’s degree focused on Holocaust education — suggested that the conditions facing children in his state during the Trump administration’s aggressive immigration enforcement raids were of a kind with those facing Frank during the Holocaust.
“We have got children in Minnesota hiding in their houses, afraid to go outside. Many of us grew up reading that story of Anne Frank,” he said. “Somebody is going to write that children’s story about Minnesota.”
The prominent mention of Frank, who died of disease in a Nazi concentration camp after her family’s hiding place was betrayed, adds to a growing discourse about whether ICE’s operations targeting immigrants in Minnesota can be compared to the Nazis’ tactics in rooting out Jews during the Holocaust. Figures such as Stephen King and Bruce Springsteen have likened ICE to the Gestapo.
Until recently, Nazi comparisons were long considered inappropriate by many in the Jewish world who argued that such analogies cheapen the memory of the particular genocide against the Jews. In the last decade, that norm has to some degree fallen away, with voices on both the right and left likening their opponents to Nazis.
On Sunday, some of Walz’s critics denounced his comments and said an immigration crackdown cannot be compared to the deliberate murder of Jews. Retweeting an account called Stop Wokeness, the activist Shabbos Kestenbaum tweeted, “One million Jewish children were killed during the Holocaust. Illegal immigrants are offered thousands of dollars to take a free flight home. Tim Walz is an evil retard.”
In a post on X responding to Walz’s analogy, Stephen Miller, a top aide to Trump, wrote, “The purpose of the rhetoric is to incite attacks on ICE.”
But others said the comparison was apt, with a quotation from Frank’s diary circulating widely online as it did in 2019 in response to ICE raids then. The quotation, those sharing it suggested, offered a close parallel to what has been playing out in Minnesota.
“Terrible things are happening outside,” the passage says. “Poor helpless people are being dragged out of their homes. Families are torn apart; men, women and children are separated. Children come home from school to find that their parents have disappeared. … Everyone is scared.”
Jewish voices, too, have invoked the Holocaust in arguing for intervention in Minnesota, where federal agents on Saturday shot and killed a man, Alex Pretti, who had been protesting their presence.
“What did we learn from the Holocaust? We have to act and we have to resist,” one rabbi who flew into Minnesota to protest told the Religion News Service last week.
Walz, a Democrat who was the vice presidential candidate in 2024, wrote a master’s thesis on Holocaust education, arguing that the Holocaust should be taught “in the greater context of human rights abuses,” rather than as a unique historical anomaly or as part of a larger unit on World War II.
“Schools are teaching about the Jewish Holocaust, but the way it is traditionally being taught is not leading to increased knowledge of the causes of genocide in all parts of the world,” he wrote in his 2001 thesis, completed while he was a high school teacher.
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